“Rape culture… is a term that really tries to connect the dots between an American society that turns this blind eye to sexual assault and the true experience of girls, which is that they are experiencing a lot of sexual assault. So this rape culture is a culture where there are rape myths – that a woman’s outfit or her alcohol consumption has caused her rape – and nobody questions these attitudes that box in the victim. It doesn’t matter that you were dressed a certain way, or it doesn’t matter how much you drank. … So what we really see among this young generation is this refusal to participate in that culture, and also very differently than the ‘90s, when I was in college, back then … what we were taught is carry mace, go to a self-defense class, protect yourself because ‘boys will be boys,’ and the best you can do is make sure that you’re safe on your own. These girls are saying, ‘No! It’s not our problem, it’s YOUR problem. It’s boys that have to change. It’s the institutions that have to change.’ This is about institutional accountability.”
— Vanessa Grigoriadis, author of Blurred Lines, on campus assault